Re: the ~ files

["David Z. Maze" <dmaze@donut.mit.edu>]

John Stevenson <John@oa.nl> writes:
JS> If you want a little bit of safety you can alway add this to
JS> your .bashrc (or what ever shell profile you source)
JS> 
JS> alias rm='rm -i'
JS> 
JS> This will ask you to confirm your deletions, so long as you do
JS> not use the -f option.  The -f option will just do it no matter
JS> how your shell is set up.

Even better, don't alias rm; instead, pick a command name like
'delete' and alias that to 'rm -i'.  Why?  Eventually you'll be
working on a system that doesn't have the alias, or you forget to put
the alias in root's dotfiles, and carelessly type 'rm *' expecting to
be asked for each file.  Lacking the alias, you won't be asked, and
will likely be quite upset at the results.

-- 
David Maze             dmaze@mit.edu          http://donut.mit.edu/dmaze/
"Hey, Doug, do you mind if I push the Emergency Booth Self-Destruct Button?"
"Oh, sure, Dave, whatever...you _do_ know what that does, right?"